Comcast Cuts Off Users Who Exceed Secret Limit 574
ConsumerAffairs.com has an article up spotlighting Comcast's tendency to cuts off heavy Internet users without defining in their AUP exactly what the bandwidth limit is. Frank Carreiro of West Jordan, Utah, got cut off by the mystery limit and started a 'Comcast Broadband dispute' blog.
DSL slower but I've never heard of a limit (Score:5, Interesting)
DSL is slower, but I've never heard of a monthly bandwidth limit. I believe that the slower throughput speed of DSL is self-policing. DSL is also individually wired to each customer, unlike cable, as cable's bandwidth is shared throughout entire neighborhoods. So, the only one you hurt by maxing out the bandwidth of DSL is yourself, and with a packet shaper, this becomes less of a problem.
It varies from area to area, but it appears the "secret" Comcast limit has been determined to be roughly 100 gigabytes per month. I believe this is a cumulative total of both upload and download.
This has been going on for some time, and the good people at broadbandreports.com [broadbandreports.com] have much to say about it....
Not that bad... (Score:5, Interesting)
"From what I know, the unspoken limits about 300 GB a month, which is more than almost any of us will touch even once in a lifetime, it takes multiple torrents running full on 24.7 . We know this cause we caught some Comcast rejects moving to our company. Sudden spikes in monthly bandwidth on our end can doom our business, to the level these guys were pulling.
The reason Comcast doesnt tell you is if they did, asshat downloaders would lawyer the total and if lets say it was 100, they'd use 99.9999 then whine if they were denied that much. The approach would backfire. Plus its a competitive disadvantage for Comcast if their competitors know what a soft limit on dl's is. You'd generate a race to the bottom over max downloads, again, the tactic would backfire.
There's always one claimed good citizen, but reading the article he has 6 kids, guaranteed not all of them is telling daddy what he left the computer doing all last night, and the night before, and the night before that. non stop DL porn? in my family's PC? Its more common than you think.
And no its not a content issue, but you'd be amazed how some of these guys have no idea what 300GB of porn or DVD looks like. Some of us with ISP careers do -- purely research purposes. And I can tell you not even our raging gamer tech supporters touch anywhere near 300 GB in a month, I've tried to get them to.
Hitting those caps is very difficult to do unless you're running non stop multiple torrents. Despite what mr. innocent citizen says."
Re:Then sue the Fuckers (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is it still advertised as unlimited? (Score:5, Interesting)
To summarize, "unlimited" is an old term from the days of dialup modems, and refers to the maximum amount of time you are allowed to stay dialed in and connected: minutes per session, hours per month, and so on. With today's modern broadband connections, kept always-on and connected 24/7, referring to them as "unlimited" is correct. The definition, unfortunately, is old.
However, this says nothing about the bandwidth you are allowed to use. This is today's top issue. We really need another definition to describe this.
With dialup modems, few people really cared about bandwidth consumption, as they were so slow that they didn't make much of an impact, even when continually ran at top speed. With today's fast broadband connections, you can consume a lot of bandwidth in a hurry, and to be affordable at residential prices, they are deliberately oversold.
There's a reason a T1 line still costs $600+/month. You're allowed to run anything and everything over it, no filtering, no capping, and to keep it maxed out at full wire speed, both upload and download, 24/7. Bandwidth to the Internet backbone, unfortunately, is still expensive. I wish it weren't true, but it is. I guess somebody has to pay for all that copper, fiber, and electricity....
13. BINDING ARBITRATION (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't opt out of this clause, your chances of receiving any civil compensation are greatly reduced. All of the other posts that talk about turning your team of lawyers loose on Comcast would be wise to review the entire agreement first.
http://www.comcast.com/arbitrationoptout/default.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not so much a "secret", as it is the 85% rule. That being, if if you travel at about the same speed as 85% of native traffic, you'll generally be ok. The thing about traffic cops is that they typically target people that stick out, not necessarily people that are merely breaking "the law". So, if average traffic is flowing at 20-over the limit, and you're traveling at 35 over the limit, then you're more likely to get tagged than the average traffic.
Then throw in your choice of vehicle, and it's even more interesting. A bright yellow porsche is more likely to be pulled over going 30+ in the left lane than the black sedan going 30+ in the lane right next to it. Again, because the first car stands out more. Between two similar sedans, the car traveling 30+ in the far left lane is more likely to be tagged than the car traveling 30+ in the far right lane. Why? because the left lane is the "fast lane".
I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying it's fair, I'm just saying that's how it is, given my years of driving experience. And I agree: understanding the ground rules for driving conditions (i.e. especially that they're not "ideal") is the best way to avoid tickets.
Re:Then sue the Fuckers (Score:4, Interesting)
The contract has two parties. If you are paying for a service, you are eligible for the service within terms of the contract.
The correct way to handle this would be the update the contract to include some vague clause about "excessive use" as a reason for terminating a contract or limiting use.
And yes. I could sue my provider for damages were they to drop my connection. I do most of my work from home but need almost constant VPN to the office. However, I'm pretty sure my contract is a standard private person one, where claims of damage are limited to the cost of the connection. If that clause is enforceable in my legislation is entirely different matter.
Re:Only a 100 GB cap? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't wait for the day Cox pisses at me over doing 300GB+ a month on my connection though. It's a more pricey business account, but I know they'll do it eventually.
Re:Only a 100 GB cap? (Score:5, Interesting)
With an invisible limit, you have no idea what to tone down.
With a cap, at least you know what to hover around.
A lot of people argue that if you tell people what the limit is, they'll just abuse that limit to the max all the can. But if you're already using more than they want you to use and they're notifying you to reduce your usage, then telling you a limit to stay under can only HELP.
I telecommute and I'm online 24x7. I stream high quality radio all day long. I watch a lot of streaming movies. I download a lot of stuff. I play a lot of games online. I download a lot of (legal) downloads from bit torrent. Just a high quality streaming radio station running during business hours over the period of a month will easily reach 80gb. They advertise all these "high media uses" for their fast download speeds, yet then they penalize you if you actually use it for that? If two people in your home listen to a lot of radio, that's 160gb/mo. Don't even think about video.
My internet usage has remained relatively the same for the last three years. Unlike your grandma who uses her 8mbps connection to check her email and the whether, I actually make heavy use of mine. Probably more than most people I know. I don't want to abuse anything. But I don't want to be denied internet access for an entire year, either (and in America, cable has a monopoly on broadband unless you live right down the street from a central office for DSL).
Anyway, my usage has remained the same for about three years. Then out of nowhere I get a call a couple months ago warning me that I will be terminated if I don't reduce my use. I ask them what I should stay under and they said "there's no set limit". I asked them to at least GIVE ME AN IDEA. They said they could not. However, they did warn me that if I ever go over this limit that they can't tell me about again *EVER* they will ban me for a year.
I'm not looking to abuse services. I'm not looking to rip anyone off. I'm not looking to piss anyone off. My usage needs are higher than the average persons, what with my VPN use and streaming services and such. Fine. But don't tell me "if you go over this limit again, we're cutting you off -- but uh.. we can't say what that limit is". I asked if I needed to cut it by just a few percent. Or by half. Or by 80%. Or what... no answer. They refused to say.
So, I asked if I could buy additional services. A bigger account? Pay for extra bandwidth? Buy a second broadband account to the same address for another $60/mo? Nope. They just have the one service. That's it. If you want more -- even if you're willing to pay for it -- fuck you.
So I keep a very close eye on the bandwidth reported by my router every other day and come the end of the month -- I get jittery. I think they ban you based on if you're in the highest usage percentage for that month in your area. By that logic, someone is ALWAYS going to be in the top 10%. Period. So every month SOMEONE is going to get banned, right? So if everyone is at home playing on the internet last month, my usage may be fine. But if everyone in the region is on vacation or busy at work and not using their connection at home, that same usage *this month* might get me banished.
And as you pointed out, they won't cut you off the first time. But they won't tell you what to reduce it by, either. And what is fine one month -- since you're compared with the current average use in your area -- might get you a second notice (and a ban for a year) the next month.
I'm quite pleased my taxes go to assist in monopolies such as this.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Add GA (10 MPH) to that list.
That's probably a reflection of the individual cops, not the jurisdiction. Just the other night, my girlfriend's brother had an accident (swerved to avoid an oncoming car that had crossed the center line and hit the curb hard enough that the airbags deployed). I had driven his mom out there to keep him company while waiting for the tow truck.
One cop stopped behind us, blinded us with the spotlight on his cruiser, yelled at me when I tried to walk over to ask him what he wanted, accused us of tresspassing (we were on a main road, on the publically-owned easement), and then drove off when he found out what the situation was.
Then, not five minutes later, another cop showed up, immediately walked over to see what the problem was (instead of mysteriously sitting in his car, shining lights on us), called a new tow truck for us (because we'd been waiting for a very long time -- here's a tip: tow trucks summoned by cops arrive much faster than those summoned by the insurance company!), and then waited with us until it came, all the while making friendly conversation.
The first cop was old (gray-haired) and employed by the county police. The second was young and with the sheriff's department. Were either age or agency a factor in their demeanor? Nah, I think the first guy was just an asshole.
Still doesn't make it right (Score:5, Interesting)
If it takes 600+ per month to provide the service they advertised, then they can say so. Arguments boiling down to, "but we'd go bankrupt for actually providing the service we advertised," are still just fancy wording for fraud. If you can't deliver what you sold, it's fraud by any other name. If you can't afford to provide it at that price, then just don't in the first place.
Redefining "unlimited" is bogus. That's just word play. If they wanted to mean exactly that and only that, it's damn easy to just say so. It takes at most one sentence. Heck, it just takes two extra words: "unlimited connect time." There, now it's perfectly clear what's meant.
It's like putting a shield outside a pub that says "free unlimited beer" and then getting into wordplay games like "yes, well, see, we meant free and unlimited as in speech. We're not limiting your rights to do whatever you wish with your beer." It's still false advertising nevertheless.
The truth is, "unlimited" used to mean exactly that: unlimited everything. And bandwidth used to cost a fair bit in the modem days too, because there was a lot less backbone cable laid. The problem was just the same. They just bet that you wouldn't use most of it. At the time, it wasn't that modems made it any different, it was just that there wasn't that horribly much to do on the net. And it was sorta self-throttling for everyone: if too many people try to see a web page at the same time, all of them get it a little slower. If there's anything that made a difference, it's not cable modems, it's that P2P programs came along. And those don't play as nice: they open hundreds of channels to stuff the bandwidth to the max.
They also knew what they're getting into when they kept upgrading the DSL or cable speed without actually increasing the backbone speeds. They kept advertising higher and higher speeds, while fully knowing they can't actually deliver.
Even the word redefinition falls on its face if you look at the examples and justifications they use to demonize their customers. Most are along that line of "but they kept downloading all day!" Ah-ha. So they used the connection and advertised bandwidth for actually an unlimited amount of time.
At any rate, it's still fraud. They sold a service based on an expectation that's just short of explicit.
Claiming "unlimited internet access" at, say, 1 megabit speed, is already making a claim about how much a cap you're getting. It means, 30 days times 24 hours times 3600 seconds times 1 megabit. Per month. XCalc says that's 2592000 megabits per month. Assuming 10 bits transmitted are roughly 1 content byte (the rest accounting for overhead, handshake, packet headers, etc), that's 259,200 megabytes or roughly 259 gigabytes. If you advertised more speed, that's more. E.g., if you advertised 6 megabit/s, for example, that's a bit over 1.5 terrabytes per month.
That's the underlying assumption.
For most people (myself included) it's more than they'll ever need, but nevertheless, that's the implicit quantity they sold. That's what those people bought. Not being willing and able to actually deliver it, just means fraud. Trying to demonize those who actually use all they bought is lame.
It's no different than if I claimed that for X$ a month you can get 1.5 square miles of land on my hypothetical third country island, on the assumption that almost noone would actually get that much land. Then when you actually buy a tractor and build a fence around exactly that much land, the ISP way would be that I coome and kick you out for being a bad community member and using that much land at the expense of others. You should have known that regardless of what the contract says, you're not actually supposed to get more than 100 acres.
That's another thing that gets my goat in that fraud, btw: trying to present those users as some arch-villains that steal from the community. It's not the IS
It's not only what is on the contract.... (Score:2, Interesting)
2. That kind of contract clause is called in BR law "leonine clauses" and are automatically void. They would be obligated to spell what the limit is -- in the contract _and_ in the advertising (even if only in the "small letters nobody can read on TV without 1080p but you can see on paper and magazine ads").
What we _do_ have here is a clause that says "the ISP will provide at least 15% of the nominal bandwidth 24/7 and 100% of the nominal bandwitdh at least 15% of the time." and it's barely legal as is. But, thank $DEITY, no DL cap. Disclaimer: in my town [third largest in the country, 4M inhabitants], there are at least six providers of broadband.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Only a 100 GB cap? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I have a friend who has Comcast. He gets constant letters saying "Stop downloading" and he does. He gets emails saying "lolover bandwidth limit we won't tell you" and he tones it down. But they still come. Unfortunately for him, Comcast is all that's available in his area.
Re:not sure (Score:3, Interesting)
If, for instance, the gigs are accumulating, and you disconnect your modem - pull it out of the wall -- and the gigs are still accumulating, then you can call in and notify.
This is almost exactly what happened to a friend of mine. He called me the after the first notice from Comcast. We assumed that Comcast was correct, and suspected his wireless router. I had him turn off the radio, and REMOVE the antennas. (yes, I know, removing the antennas will only reduce the range, but the radio was off as well. I was concerned about someone breaking into the router and reactivating the radio.) We then proceeded to resecure everything. (change passwords, keys, etc.)
Next month Comcast said his usage had increased over the previous month, and cut him off immediately. Then they refused to talk to him. When he called in, as soon as they identified the account, they would tell him there was nothing anyone could do and hung up on him. If I hadn't seen the whole thing myself, I would not have believed it. Unfortunately, he did not contact Comcast in writing, as he should have if he really wanted his service back. Instead he called up Verizon and got DSL which he's currently quite happy with. It has a lower peak, but is already proving more reliable.
Ironically, Comcast still has the high bandwidth user somewhere out there, and got rid of a long time customer whose usage was on the moderate to low side. Plus they have me telling ALL of my business customers to avoid Comcast if they don't want their business to be cut off one day without warning.
Re:Only a 100 GB cap? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to live in VA, now live in MD, technically the DC Metro area still. VA officers, especially the state troopers are known to be some of the harshest in the country when it comes to traffic enforcement (except for fairfax city [not county] officers, they have been known to be extreme bastards at times). VA still gives you a good 5 to 10mph leeway on speeding, as it is much harder to contest in court, even when you show up with speed calibration logs (you take your car to an inspection station in VA after getting the ticket, get it calibrated, if it shows calibration is off, the Judge usually dismisses the ticket for anything within the first 15mph of a speeding ticket)...
How do I know this.. well many years ago.. when I had a horrible driving record, and had been to 3 court mandated driver training programs.. and was 1 point/moving violation from spending 10 days in jail and losing my license for 90 days.. (it was at that point I decided speeding.. bad...), and many many traffic court appearances... its just how things worked in the court system there.
As for VA, they still use radar, which is accurate, but still has a margin of error, unlike MD, they no longer use radar, they use lidar.. which sucks.. cos that thing is extremely accurate, and impossible to contest (none of this it was the car next to me... since the officer points the damn laser at your license plate, and they usually tag you from miles away, long before you ever see them, so hitting the brakes when you do see them is way too late)....
Re:Only a 100 GB cap? (Score:3, Interesting)
1. comcast significantly Oversells bandwidth in areas, Most towns have 10% of the backbone connectivity they really need. In my town they are selling the 8Mbit connections and you can not get any transfers above 2.25 Mbit outside their network. They always point customers at their bandwidth tester that resides in the head end. I point the customer at a bandwidth tester I know is outside Comcast networks and it reliably shows 2.25 in this town, more in the next town over. The coupled with my personal knowledge that they do not have the bandwidth at that headend to service the customers they are selling. Granted this was 3 years ago, but testing today still shows me the same information I was getting 3 years ago. They did not upgrade.
2. there are customer tiers just like best buy. you buy your service and use it, you are not a desireable customer. The best customers are grandma paying for the highest speed Cable modem and rarely uses it. Actually most big executives are this way. They get 5-6 digital PVR boxes in the home and a top speed cable modem and then never use any of it because they are gone all the time. If you use your cable modem a lot you are not liked as much. If you call customer service on a regular basis about outages you get put on the bottom tier of customers we want to keep.
There are actually a LOT more things they do that was part of what they called "total customer care" Rah Rah they made us employees sit through on a quarterly basis. High bandwidth users were considered high risk and should also be watched carefully for illegal activity. we were specifically told, "high bandwidth users are not what we want as customers, do everything you can to encourage them to go elsewhere."
comcast cares about you!
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Limit is... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Wish I could say it was for something good and I was downloading warez and pr0n -- it was all for work)"
300-400 GB!?
Thats up to 20 GB a day for a normal workweek. If you do that much for 'work' your employer should be footing your bill for a business line.
Just what exactly do you do that requires you to download that much data in a single day?
Re:Then sue the Fuckers (Score:1, Interesting)
Can't, their comeback is that your contract spells out the Service to be "for entertainment purposes only" and they'll threaten you to back-bill for business-grade service (hundreds more per month). The solution is to go DSL. If the service breaks and you lose money, they take accountability (maybe not pay you back for the loss, but at least will fix it fast rather than threaten to back-bill you. On DSL, you only get back-billed if you are running a business on it (as opposed to just working at home on occasion or even frequently).
I know what I'm talking about --I had one of the first 200 cable modems in the US back in 1995 and let COX train its people 10 and 20 at a time in my house in the early years. I continued on with them until 2003 When a billing dispute broke out over a whopping $115 --a single month of service-- as I was rebounding from the industry's nuclear winter. They wanted to get out there and wreck my credit over that $115 to slow me down from going satellite, which I threatened to do. Some freaky cable guy who was on the phone wrote in my file with COX, after 18 years of paid service with them and their predecessor, including cable modem service for 8 years and allowing them to train people in my house and even having taken their crummy $1500/month Excite@Work T1 service at my office for 3 years, that I threatened him over the phone and so every single time I called back in to mitigate the $115 dispute, that last entry would pop up in the notes on the account and the person I was speaking to would add another layer of BS --sort of like how office rumors turn into snowballs. This continued on until, in the end, COX managers I involved thought I was some freak and refused to take my calls or clear my credit, even if I paid the $115 --they sent it to a collection agency called 'CREDIT CONTROL CORP' and when I refi'ed, my home mortgage went up $30,000 over 30 years, higher monthly payments due to 200 point FICO hit for this single "open collection" item (I don't use credit much b/c parents survived The Great Depression and taught me better, so any single negative item like this is devastating). Horrific that the mortgage people just go off FICO score when setting rates too --that's ok for credit card drugs, but not for 30 year loans. Yeah, I sued them in small claims court for maximum $7,500 but when I learned they could counter-claim $115, and even if they were only awarded $0.01 and I was awarded $7500, I would still get a "judgement item" on my credit report (for the $0.01) which would run for 10 years --plus they were going to stand up and accuse me of issuing threats to their staff of very young nightclub patrons/community college dropouts. So I was advised to wait four years (paying the higher mortgage payments after my last refi) and then sue so they would have no counter-claim --that period just expired last month. Anyway, that's how I wound up with 8 years of cable modem experience and 4 years of DSL experience.
My horror story with what an unregulated protection-outfit like a cable company can do aside, my personal observations: DSL is much more reliable and is "actually" faster (despite having "theoretical" speed that's about 1/2 cable), plus the phone companies are regulated by Public Utility Commissions (which also can arbitrate billing issues), most of the phone company personnel are "bonded" by third-party insurance companies that do background checks on the personnel they send to your home or talk to you on the phone or deal with the equipment --whereas cable tv people are notoriously screwed up human beings and the but of many jokes (even Jim Carry's famous "The Cable Guy" Movie). Plus DSL is more secure --I found that COX did not even enable encryption between the modems on the neighborhood loops and their head-ends, so the kids and hackers in the neighborhood can sit there with a JTAG'ed cable modem and tcpdump all the packets in their neighborhood (remember that these creeps are often are in close proximity
Its probably not a simple number (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Only a 100 GB cap? (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that a ~$30k/month OC-48 can accommodate about 3000 250GB/month accounts (assuming the load is distributed evenly around the clock), the bandwidth cost itself would boil down to under $0.10/GB all-inclusive. However, the same OC-48 can only handle about 300 8Mbps accounts going full-tilt simultaneously so I am guessing the real issue is the increased peak bandwidth that needs to be supported to maintain a reasonable Worst-of-Worst QoS and will leave the ISPs with much more under-used OC-xxx capacity than they'd like.
People who want to have truly unlimited download should pay a premium equivalent to their share of an OC-48. 8Mbps = 1/300th of an OC-48's bandwidth so ~$100/month would be the premium that buys you the privilege of downloading up to about 2.6TB/month - the most that can be downloaded on a 8Mbps link over a 30 days period. This way, ISPs would have their base income and heavy-user-loaded OC-XXXes costs covered with extra capacity to cover traffic surges from regular accounts.
For less extreme users (like me), I would like to see customizable plans: 1- $10/month account maintenance fee, 2- select your speed (~$5/Mbps) 3- select either Unlimited ($share-of-OC-48) or your base GBs/month (price breaks could depend on selected speed) 4- pay extra for GB/months beyond prepaid (price breaks could vary depending on selected speed and base GB/month), GBs charges should be limited to no more than twice the OC-48 share equivalent. With those "rules", a true unlimited 8Mbps account would cost about $150/month and I would be able to get a more useful service (trading speed for more GBs/month) for the same $40/month.
I.e., weasel-wording bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but the _only_ reason a "performance" degradation exists there at all, is because they _massively_ oversold the bandwidth and can't actually deliver what they've promised. We're not talking about people using botnets or whatever other malicious acts, we're talking people who just use the bandwidth advertised and sold.
Trying to reword that to sound like it's the users who do evil stuff to Comcast is just stupid and, above all, _dishonest_. It's Comcast that oversold, not the users who somehow steal the neighbour's bandwidth.
If you ping-flooded Comcast DNS server, or if your malformed packet headers caused some router to lock up, _that_ would count as being guilty of disrupting or degrading performance. Just using the bandwidth? Gimme a break. Blaming that on the customers and not on the overselling ISP... that's such a fucked-up definition of responsibility, it's not even funny. By the same definition, you could accuse people of creating a disruption for:
- not missing enough flights they booked at an overselling airline,
- talking too much on the phone when they're on a flat-rate local-calls scheme,
- actually using the parking spot they pay for (directly, or as part of the rent, or any other arrangement) all day, instead of providing some generous oportunity to oversell parking space,
- travelling too much by bus when they have a month card,
I'm sure it'd be so00 much of an improvement to everyone if we apply that model and start throwing accusations at mothers using the bus to go to work _and_ shopping _and_ to take their kid from school _and_ occasionally to visit a friend, instead of using it just twice a day like an average person should. Not.
Nope, sorry, I still stand by what I've said: if you can't actually provide a service, don't advertise it and don't sell it. Or at the very least, have the decency to not try to weasel-word it into sounding like the customers are some kind of criminals.
Nice use of a fallacy there, but:
1. It's a strawman anyway, since it's not the reason Comcast claimed. I wish I could even say "nice strawman", but truth is it's a pretty silly one, because;
2. "Copyrighted" is such a broad term that it's akin to saying you disallow digital downloads. Get this: everything is automatically copyrighted. This message is automatically copyrighted by me, for example. There's an implicit assumption that I grant you a right to read it, and Slashdot to offer it on their site, but it's still copyrighted by me. If you were to put it on music and make a hit single out of it, you _could_ talk to my lawyer at some point in the future. So by your logic, Comcast should disconnect you for downloading it in your browser. Linux distros, since you mention those, are certainly copyrighted too. Read the GPL some day.
So maybe you mean _pirated_ instead? Even that's flawed, because
3. there's plenty of stuff you can do on the network _without_ involving any pirated material. No, it won't be all linux distros. You just need to watch enough Youtube videos -- yes, there are plenty of non-pirated ones too -- for example, to easily go over the limit.
Or here's the ISPs themselves offering a handy-dandy example: in all their calling the customers names, they claim all over t
The REAL cost of bandwidth. (Score:3, Interesting)
In much of the country, ISP's are thrilled if they can pay (at the DS3 level) $75 per mb/s delivered to their network. $100/mb/s is not uncommon, as are much higher figures.
Note that this does not include things like the actual facilities used to deliver this to the consumer.
1mb/s is 3.6gb/hour, 86.4gb/day, or 2592gb/month. Note that these are all gigabit/s. Divide by 8 to get gigabytes/month and you find that the ISP only has 324GB/month (assuming perfect transfer efficiencies) for their $75.00. This also incorrectly assumes that the traffic is spread evenly over 24x7. In reality, transfer on a full circuit is more along the lines of 100-150GB/month per meg of circuit capacity when you take into account day and night patterns.
So assuming that someone is transferring 300GB/month, the bandwidth alone may be costing the ISP close to $150/month.
Another point which is often missed is the traffic engineering issues caused by even a couple of customers transferring 300GB/month on a given segment - Especially if this is upload traffic in a system which has very limited upload capacity. One or two customers transferring this quantity of data can bring a system to it's knees and significantly affect the throughput other subscribers have available to them, causing all subscribers on the segment to be unhappy about their service.
The ISP is then faced with upgrading it's systems to support one or two customers which are already potentially costing them more money than they are providing. To put this into perspective, the same amount of capacity to serve one 300GB/month subscriber could easily handle 100 or more "normal" 3GB/s or less a month subscriber.